On Baths' 'Obsidian,' songwriter dances to his dark moods

Los Angeles Times photographers document 2013 in music.

August Brown

If you’re looking for a lightweight, low-stakes dance album as a soundtrack for your summer pool parties, go buy Baths’ new album “Obsidian.” Then promptly sock it away until you’re feeling wintry and miserable again, because this record -- while still an accomplished, hooky set of experimental electronica -- is a long walk off a short pier of despair.

“Obsidian,” the second record from the main project of the L.A.-based producer and songwriter Will Wiesenfeld, can’t be accused of misstating its mood -- see song titles such as “Worsening,” “Ossuary” and “Earth Death.” But it’s also a surprising new album from the fast-rising electronic artist, who is increasingly leaning on dance music tones and rhythms (he plays the El Rey Theatre on Friday) as his lyrics turn gothic and mordant.

“There is kind of an optimistic part, on the song ‘Ironworks,’” Wiesenfeld said of the album, his second as Baths. “But yeah, it’s bleak.”

The 24-year-old Wiesenfeld had long kicked around L.A.’s noise- and beat-music scenes in various guises before Baths broke out with its 2010 album “Cerulean,” for the local label Anticon. The record’s hip-hop-indebted drum loops, quick-cut samples and adventurous vocal processing loosely aligned Baths with the Low End Theory scene of L.A. producers.

Yet Wiesenfeld always saw himself as more of a songwriter with an old-fashioned affection for lyrics and melody than as a pure digital wonk. So while his beat-scene peers turned to face-crushing dub step or spaced-out experimentalism, Wiesenfeld found a third way -- clever, danceable cuts indebted to the ‘90s “IDM” wave (so-called intelligent dance music), but with falsetto lyrics soaked in malaise.

Unfortunately (but perhaps metaphorically), his early concepts for the record were soon followed by a brutal case of E. coli that left him waylaid and disconsolate for months. “Obsidian” isn’t any kind of an album about illness, but his time writhing on the couch did provide visceral source material for the emotions -- emotional blankness, seeping depression, the dark allure of suicide -- that he was interested in writing about.

“The idea for the album was already there,” he said. “But the illness provided -- not inspiration, exactly, certainly not any feeling like ‘Oh, this is so great’ -- but this feeling of nothingness and being so uninspired and trapped in the house and too tired to even get up and and drink Gatorade. That was interesting to me.”

The contradictions are best seen on the single “Miasma Sky,” a limber house cut in which Wiesenfeld deadpans about wanting to chuck himself off a cliff -- “Tall rock shelf, are you maybe here to help me hurt myself?”

On “No Eyes,” he turns a rubbery, slow-rolling disco production into a black hole of awful, empty sex: “I have no eyes, I have no love, I have no hope ... It’s not a matter of if you mean it, it is only a matter of come and ... me.”

That latter sentiment might be a surprise to Baths fans, who may be used to Wiesenfeld tunes such as“Apologetic Shoulderblades” and “Lovely Bloodflow” that wore lust lightly. But his new overtness is a better fit for where he is now.

He’s an artist with a rising profile -- the El Rey holds nearly 800 fans -- and a out gay man whose Chatsworth youth didn’t come with many examples of how to be an artist in the straight-guys club of experimental beat music. At a time when most of his peers are dating and figuring out what they want from their romantic lives, Wiesenfeld has been perpetually on the road or holed up writing records. He hasn’t quite deciphered what he wants from a relationship, but he’s become more open to writing about that.

“To be honest, I’m still wonky as hell at being gay,” he said. “Being gay has never been a problem, I’m extremely out. But I’m not a ‘clubber,’ I don’t drink, and going up to a guy at a bar with a glass of water always seemed creepy. The song ‘Incompatible’ is me making fun of the fact that I’ve never been in a long-term relationship.”

“Obsidian” isn’t likely to leave him much time for domesticity. Its avant-garde touches, club-inclined backbones and Postal Service-worthy pop hooks are at a flash point of contemporary electronica trends.

But to Wiesenfeld, it’s still all just pop music -- even if it reads like Sylvia Plath at a 4 a.m. afterparty.

“People think ‘pop music’ is, like, top-40, but to me it’s always been about being melodic while taking music apart,” he said. “Even in purely experimental music, I always find some little thing to grab on to.”